What kind of love gives up, abandons, and seeks its own whenever things get difficult? The apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians that love “bears all things… endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:7-8). But what kind of love doesn’t bear anything difficult, doesn’t endure any tragedy, fails in the face of a spouse’s chemo and cancer and disease?
What kind of love enjoys all of a spouse’s blessings and health but puts a stiff arm up to a spouse’s trials and suffering? And then says, “I need companionship, and your suffering just doesn’t fit into my plans for my happiness.” What kind of love is that? I think most of us recognize that’s not any kind of love at all.
Would you marry a person if they wanted to revise the wedding vows to something like this? “For richer and for wealthier. In fitness and in health. Till ‘that point that you no longer meet my needs’ do us part.” Would you marry someone who wanted to say those vows to you? Someone who says, “I’ll love you right up to the point that it is no longer personally fulfilling for me to do so”?
You wouldn’t recognize that as love. You wouldn’t put up with someone trying to tell you that is love. And you would be right to do so. Because love doesn’t stop when life gets hard. Love proves it is really love when life gets hard.
[You can listen to the rest of the sermon below.]
